Revenue: £130m (+22%)
Headcount: 124
This higher education-focused Apple reseller defied the straitened backdrop by logging 22% revenue growth in its year to 30 June 2023 (following 32% growth in 2022), according to numbers it shared with us. M&A will be necessary if Academia is to reach its long-term £300m-£400m revenue goal, however, owner Andrew Harman told IT Channel Oxygen in January as he revealed he had talked to 25 targets since investing in 2020.
Oxygen ice-breaker: Harman is striving to boost Academia’s services business and reduce its reliance on Apple, which – together with Jamf – now generates 50% of sales (down from 75-80% previously).
Q&A with Academia owner Andrew Harman
Your revenues grew 22% to £130m in your year to 30 June 2023. What drove that?
When I bought the business [in 2020], it was pretty well Apple-centric – around 75-80%.
I wanted to increase annuity revenues and decrease reliance on just one main supplier. And I was keen to spread the risk across different sectors. That’s what we’ve been doing the last couple of years.
We’ve been fortunate that we’ve increased [revenues] in two or three different strands. Software has seen massive uptake for us, partnering with the likes of Adobe and DocuSign -it’s £35m-£40m of our turnover now.
We hired 12-13 people from Computacenter’s corporate team, plus a couple of managers. Customers don’t just jump from one [supplier] to another, but the feeling with Computacenter was it was not their market, and so we were able to onboard a number of those clients.
In the first six months of fiscal 2024 we’re still growing our business, and that’s because our commercial team are starting to pick up some big opportunities in that corporate/commercial space.
You’ve spoken in the past about your desire to make multiple acquisitions. Has the strategy changed, or have you just not found the right target?
One of our disappointments is that we haven’t actually locked on the right company yet, but it’s not through any want of trying. We’ve talked to 25 companies, and some of them we’re still in discussion with.
Having experience of acquiring around 20 companies in my previous life I know what’s right and what’s not right. We’ve got the financial firepower, expertise and knowledge, we just need to execute on the right company.
How likely is it that you’ll tie down an acquisition in 2024?
I don’t want to say it’s going to happen. But if we’re going to get to our goal of being a £300m-£400m managed services business, to help us achieve those targets we’ll definitely need strong acquisitions.
